Copywriting For Social Media-Top 18 Effective Strategies To Boost Engagement

Copywriting is a powerful tool to attract and engage with your prospective customers. And pairing it with the huge reach and influence of social media multiplies its power manifold! However, you are not alone in the race to boost engagement and conversions using social media copywriting.

With more than 1 billion stories shared monthly across Facebook apps alone, you have to defeat a lot of competition to earn people’s attention on social media.

Hence, you must follow the best strategies while copywriting for social media to stand out and build engagement with your target audience. And this unique engagement will eventually turn your audience into loyal customers. 

Want to know more?

This blog covers the top 18 strategies to help you get started with effective copywriting for social media. Following this, we will check out some successful examples for every major social media platform to give you the inspiration you need! Let’s get started…

Why is copywriting for social media so important?

Social media copywriting involves using copies to attract and impress your prospective customers, boosting engagement, and eventually converting them to buyers. Here are some benefits of copywriting for social media-

• Lets you present information in a persuasive and targeted manner with the help of both text and images. You can reach your desired audience using posts on relevant groups or profiles and targeted social media ads.
• By posting brief but compelling content along with convincing CTAs, you can engage with your prospects on social media and persuade them to take action. This action may involve engaging with you through comments, liking and sharing your posts, or making purchases.
• Copies for social media allow you to express your unique brand voice and differentiate your business from competitors during our social media marketing campaign. Good social media copies will help you to create a positive brand image and build your recognition even amongst bigger competitors.
• Social media copywriting offers a low-cost method to start conversations with prospective and existing customers. And this gradually increases brand awareness about your offerings and boosts customer loyalty.
• Copies for social media also help you leverage keywords and hashtags to boost your online visibility. Moreover, social media offers various targeting options for posts and ads to help you reach your target audience accurately at low costs.

Copywriting Tips For Social Media

When done right, copywriting for social media can increase engagement and conversion rates of your business. But standing out from the crowd is a serious challenge for social media copywriters, especially for small or medium businesses. Hence, you must apply some time-tested strategies to raise the impact and efficiency of your social media copywriting-

1. Define your brand voice and tone

You must start by defining the voice of your brand. The brand voice represents your brand’s unique perspective and the values it stands for. You can implement it while writing copies to give your brand a personality that your target audience can easily understand, relate to and remember.

Moreover, you must decide the tone or style of communication you follow in your writing. The tone includes multiple aspects such as word choice, emotional appeal, issues covered, and writing style. And you can determine it based on the brand voice, the target audience, promoted offerings, and other market trends.

The right brand tone is crucial to reinforce your brand’s personality and raise the impact of your promotional message.

How do brands follow it?

Casper is a mattress brand and you can see how it is using humor here to answer some of the not-so-intelligent questions customers have about their product. It has been helpful in getting them a higher level of engagement on Twitter. 

2. Maintain consistency

All your promotional copies must maintain a consistent brand voice and tone irrespective of their sharing medium and format. This consistency is crucial to maintaining the credibility of your brand and helps to create a strong brand image that people would like to associate with. 

On the other hand, a changing voice and tone in your copies will confuse your audience and create a weak, self-contradictory brand impression. You must stay in character as a brand!

3. Use the right copywriting formula like PAS (Problem, Agitate, Solve) and apply the right tools to boost efficiency

A copywriting formula involves practical and time-tested writing strategies that you can adapt to any topic to simplify the copywriting process. The right formula can save time and energy by giving you a readymade writing plan tailored for social media. 

For example, the PAS copywriting formula stands for problem-agitate-solve. In this formula, you start by defining the problem, agitate the readers by emphasizing it, and then offer your product or service as the ideal solution.

How can you follow it?

Here’s a classic example of how you can use the formula in a tweet. It starts with a problem followed by its agitation and ends with a solution in an extremely crisp way. 

Moreover, you can use copywriting tools to raise the speed and cost-efficiency of your writing. Such tools can significantly boost your productivity as a copywriter while countering writer’s block by automating most of the research and text generation process. 

4. Use FOMO marketing

Fear of missing out, or FOMO, is the natural phenomenon of being afraid that you will miss out on something valuable if you don’t take immediate action. This strategy is widely used in social media marketing to compel people into action by instilling the fear that they can miss out on a great deal by delaying further. 

You can apply FOMO effectively in copywriting as limited-time offers, special deals, temporary discounts, sales, etc.

5. Keep it short and crisp

The average customer attention span is at an all-time low of 8 seconds! And your copies must fit into this limited span and deliver the message impactfully. As a result, it is important to be concise and crisp in your writing when creating marketing copies.

You must focus on presenting your strongest features using simple and catchy sentences. Further, you must adjust your content formatting, text size, font, color scheme, and structure for easy readability.

6. Keep it simple

Use simple words and short sentences in the active voice and keep your text free of jargon. Also, make sure to format the content correctly with bold headings, pointwise structure, and highlighting key points, while avoiding long blocks of text. A simple copy that can be easily read and understood by the intended audience will naturally raise your engagement and conversions. 

7. Know your audience’s thoughts

The most crucial step in copywriting for social media is understanding the intent and perspective of your audience. After all, you must know your audience before convincing them to trust you and spend their hard-earned money!

So, you must research your audience to understand their needs, wants, lifestyles, and thought processes. And this understanding will empower you to create persuasive and relatable copies that perfectly connect with the audience, getting them to engage with your brand in the long run.

8. Use emotions

Appealing to readers’ emotions can take a long way to win them over! If a social media copywriter can evoke the right emotions and link them to their offering, people may be willing to spend more to buy the product or service than they would be based on purely logical thinking. 

The emotions you evoke should depend on the offering, customer type, and your brand voice. For example, you should evoke fear while selling safes or insurance services, but you would try to generate longing if you are selling fast food. 

9. Check grammar and spelling

Proper spelling and grammar keep your message clear and give your brand credibility. On the other hand, any copywriting errors can severely undermine your message and brand impression. 

In fact, errors in copies decrease site visitors’ time on a landing page by 8% and increase the bounce rate by 85%. Hence, it is crucial to proofread your copies carefully to find and remove any errors in their grammar and spelling.

10. Use Hashtags and targeting options

A hashtag is a phrase preceded by a hash symbol (#). If you add hashtags to your social posts, those interested in your topic can find your post easily when they search for a similar term or hashtag. 

So, hashtags are great tools to draw attention to your social media posts and boost interaction on social platforms. As a result, you must use them in your social media copies to get relevant leads who engage and transact with your brand.

If you are writing copies for ads, you can use the targeting options offered by the platform’s Ads manager to help enhance the visibility of your ads to your desired audience. This will help you streamline your resources and save money while boosting marketing ROI.

11. Always use a CTA

A call to action is the text and link that leads to the landing page from where you can proceed to purchase the advertised product or service. It is a fundamental part of social media copies as it directs people to move to the conversion stage. You will lose your audience without a CTA! 

So, you must add a prominent CTA at the end of your copies using compelling and catchy text to ensure that your copies get you qualified leads that convert to sales.

12. Involve your readers in the conversation

You’re not just writing for your audience on social media. You’re also writing with them! This means that you should involve your audience while copywriting for social media to trigger favorable conversations on the platform.

You can do this by asking questions, including quotes from customers’ posts, making content on current issues, presenting case studies of customers, and inviting readers to comment on their opinions.

13. Keep captions short

Social media captions must be short, clear, and convincing to have the maximum impact. This is because viewers tend to ignore lengthy captions with complex structuring or jargon. On the other hand, captions so short that they lose all meaning are not desirable either!

So, you must find the right balance to create a concise yet powerful message. Moreover, you must consider that most people do not read more than the headline. So, your headline must deliver the message sufficiently by itself. 

14. Use emojis

One of the most effective ways to attract attention to your social media copy is by using emojis. Emojis make your content much more interesting to your audience than plain text. And your audience will likely read your content because of the funny or intriguing expressions. 

What’s more? Emojis add visual cues that make it much easier for your audience to understand and relate to your content, boosting their engagement.

15. Create infographics

Infographics enhance your copies by presenting information in a simple, concise, and appealing manner. They are great tools for grabbing attention as they instantly generate interest in the minds of your audience. Hence, you must merge key informational graphics with your promotional text wherever appropriate to raise the impact of your copies.

16. Add visuals

Adding relevant images is a simple hack to multiply your copy’s attraction and engagement power. You can even add multiple images with corresponding captions to make copies that instantly attract and impress your target audience. After all, high-quality images will naturally capture more attention than a lifeless block of text! 

17. Always use active voice

Active voice helps people to picture themselves doing the mentioned action as it focuses on the subject who is taking the action. This is in contrast to passive voice, which includes the indirect statement about the action being taken. Yes, the previous sentence is in passive voice!

In short, active voice is more action-oriented and relatable to the target audience, and you must try using it while copywriting for social media to engage your audience effectively.

18. Add some relevant evidence

Using statistics, known facts, and social proof (reviews, past clients, case studies, and real-life examples) adds credibility and persuasive power to your copies.

So, you must research and add relevant evidence to your social media copies to multiply the attraction, impression, and engagement generated. 

Social Media Copy Examples

Let’s explore some examples of social media posts and ads that have achieved high conversions across all leading platforms and find what they did right-

Instagram Examples

1. Pizza advertisement post by Pizzeria Grano

This is an example from Vancouver-based pizza shop Grano. It proves that very short captions of a few words may be enough when paired with compelling images.

2. Spring Happy Hour offer caption by Earls Restaurant

Earls Restaurant has used creative and relatable captions with emojis along with an attractive image in this post. This is an example of using emotion-inducing text, relevant emojis, and relevant images to grab attention.

3. Winter caption by Lee’s donuts

The image presents an adorable baby with donuts amidst snow to link the product with current affairs and positive emotions. Moreover, the caption encourages driving safely to show the brand is socially responsible. This is a case of subtle messaging to improve the brand impression and leverage current events for attention.

4. Summer caption by Frank and Oak

This caption asks people to share their photos wearing the company’s apparel. It shows an empty pool and uses a direct call to action to drive customers into an action that involves the brand. This ensures better engagement and brand loyalty.

Facebook Examples

1. Dog food ad post by Nom Nom

This is an example of using an attractive visual of the product with a brief and prominent headline accompanying it. The headline catches attention, and the longer caption convinces those who feel interested.

2. Promotional post by Slack

Slack has used a fun and mystical brand voice to grab attention. It addresses the problems the target audience faces with one crisp statement while using a colorful and eye-catching image as the background. It also includes a subtle “learn more” CTA to maintain a helpful impression without blatant promotion.

3. Competitive post by Shopify

This is a post that offers to provide facts on why Shopify is better than Etsy. It is a short, straightforward post with a minimalistic image that deals with one specific idea instead of confusing the customer. It is also a very targeted post for those who have basic knowledge about Shopify and are wondering if it is the best option.

4. Promotional post by Heal

This post by Heal focuses on addressing the problem faced in finding the right doctor at the right time and location. It also shows its strong point of affordability clearly with a relevant image. Further, it validates its service quality by asking people to see what CNN says about Heal.

Twitter Examples

1. Creative post by Victoria’s Secret

This short but charming post addresses the need to give gifts in the holiday season. It also uses emojis, creative statements, and attractive images of its products to attract attention. Moreover, it adds a direct CTA with a link to encourage immediate action.

2. Engagement post by Boots

This simplistic post by Boots simply reminds people that Christmas is coming and follows it by asking what people have on their wishlist. It does not include a direct promotion or call to action but encourages engagement directly by evoking Christmas-related emotions and encouraging people to comment.

3. Humorous post by Microsoft

Microsoft is well known and has little to promote or prove unless they release a new product. So, it has gone for a humorous and highly-relatable post that keeps people involved with the brand by amusing them. Humor also encourages people to share the content further, hence multiplying the post’s reach and maintaining the positive impression of Microsoft.

4. Witty wordplay post by Dominos

Dominos uses clever wordplay in this short and amusing post by replacing “trust” with “crust.” This quirky copy with trending emojis is primarily meant to engage the young target audience while subtly promoting the product. Moreover, this post helps to reinforce the casual and fun tone that Dominos wants to associate with.

Linkedin Examples

1. B2B promotional post by Slack

The popular business communication platform has included a short problem statement, i.e., “incidents happen.” This is followed by the solution placed within a banner with an interesting graphic. It also boosts engagement with an indirect CTA asking people to download a free ebook to find out about the solution.

2. B2B promotional post by Zapier

Next is another promoted post we have that employs a minimalist and creative graphic with a simple statement that emphasizes the benefits offered by Zapier. It uses short statements and a simple but meaningful graphic to attract and retain attention, followed by a CTA asking to sign up. The tone is generally formal as the target audience is other businesses.

3. Promotional PAS-based post by Deputy

This is a post by Deputy for its workforce management software. It directly applies the PAS formula by stating the problem, agitating the audience with the concern that employee productivity may fall due to burnout, and then offers its personnel management software as a clear solution. It also uses a high-quality image of the software interface so the audience can quickly glimpse its diverse features without much reading.

4. Post to improve brand impression by Meta

This simplistic post by Meta aims to improve its impression on data safety by delivering a clear message that the company is investing more money and personnel in safety and security. 

Meta has employed statistics and used a simple infographic in this post to let the audience make their own interpretation. And this is a unique case where the company has not used persuasive language and just stated facts to maintain its formal and confident brand voice.

Start Boosting Your Engagement Now By Applying Our Copywriting Strategies!

Social media offers a huge potential for attracting and engaging prospective and existing customers. And you can unlock this potential through high-quality copywriting for social media, which you can easily ace by using the 18 strategies we just saw.

Here is a quick recap of the social media copywriting tips we discussed here-

• Define your brand voice and tone to create a personality for your brand that people can easily engage with.
• Use a copywriting formula like PAS (Problem, Agitate, Solve) to simplify and optimize the copywriting process. You may also apply copywriting tools to further simplify and speed up the process.
• Use Fear Of Missing Out in your marketing to encourage immediate action.
• Keep it short and crisp to make the maximum impact in the limited attention span of your audience.
• Involve your readers in the conversation to get them engaged with your brand
• Keep it simple to increase understandability.
• Know your audience’s thoughts through proper research and use this knowledge in your copies to make them relevant.
• Leverage emotions to engage your audience.
• Check grammar and spelling multiple times as errors can destroy your brand impression.
• Use Hashtags to increase your visibility on social media.
• Maintain consistency to boost your credibility and build a strong impression.
• Always use a CTA to convert interested prospects into customers.
• Mind the caption length and find the right balance between being concise and informative.
• Use emojis to get the readers intrigued and interested.
• Create infographics to engage and inform people quickly.
• Add visuals to grab attention.
• Always use active voice to involve the readers.
• Add relevant facts, statistics, and social proof to make your copies more authentic and convincing.

Following the strategies, we have also discussed some leading examples of copywriting for social media that you can use as samples to get started quickly.

It is now your turn to apply these strategies and examples to boost your engagement with prospects on social media. Go ahead and use the power of social media to your benefit with the most irresistible copies! 

All the best!

FAQs